Signs of Life
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom,—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom,—is a type of the life of this world.
, The Stones of Venice (1853)
A third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom. Ruskin’s foxglove carries its entire history and future on a single stem: the unopened promises at the top, the vibrant present in the middle, the fading evidence of what has already flowered below. Nothing is hidden. The imperfection is the life.
He wrote this in 1853, watching industrial England learn to mass-produce objects of unprecedented smoothness. The machines made no mistakes. Each product emerged identical to the last, untouched by mood or fatigue or the particular pressure of any human hand. This was progress, certainly. But to Ruskin, something essential was disappearing from the made world: the visible evidence that it had been made at all.
We live now among tools of a different order, tools that can produce creative work so fluent it shows no seams, no hesitation, no trace of having been struggled with. There is genuine usefulness in this. But Ruskin’s insight persists: rigid perfection admits no life. What we might be tempted to smooth away (the unevenness, the parts still forming, the evidence of process) carries the same information as the foxglove’s stem: this was made by someone living, still becoming, not yet finished.